


If you’re reading this, your name isn’t Chell

by orphan_account



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cake, F/F, GLaDOS is in love with Chell, Memory Loss, Mild Gore, Some Humor, days are not in order, mostly just angst, one sided chelldos, the bring your daughter to work day massacre, the last two are actually placed right after GLaDOS' daydream about Caroline and Chell, we don't really know what's going on with Chell, wheatley being wheatley, young Chell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5486846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She isn’t breathing..” she muttered to herself.</p>
<p>“..She isn’t- what? No, that doesn’t make any sense. All humans breathe.” Wheatley said. </p>
<p>“She used to breathe, as far as I know. I think I saw her breathe at least once.” Wheatley murmured, examining Chell’s lifeless body. “More than once, actually. She used to breathe a lot. Breathed a lot, after a particularly hard test. Breathes more than she talks, this one.” </p>
<p>“She’s dead, you moron.” GLaDOS said. </p>
<p>Wheatley looked at GLaDOS’ eye. “Pardon me?” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(What would happen if Chell died during the testing. includes my take on the take-your-daughter-to-work-day massacre, and some one sided ChellDOS. also, not a really nice ending. I don't know. Portal makes me emotional.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you’re reading this, your name isn’t Chell

[ Day 184 of Wheatley’s reign ] 

GLaDOS was no more. It seemed normal to say so. Maybe it was better if she’d say GLaDOS had never existed. After all, there was just her, Chell, and the leader of Aperture Science, Wheatley. Sometimes a sign on a door she passed mentioned a computer, some kind of Artificial Intelligence whom carried the name GLaDOS. Genetic Lifeform and- something. Dark ozone selection. No- wait. That didn’t make any sense.

Wheatley had managed to keep the place together, or at least good enough for them to continue testing. Occasionally Chell would look into a reflective surface and see her own face. Dark brown hair, loose over her shoulders (she used to have a hair tie, but lost it), and that… thing on her forehead. She was pretty sure it did not belong there. But that was about all she knew, too. She only knew her name was Chell because mister Wheatley kept calling her that, and she knew she meant a lot to him, because he always seemed a bit sad when she finished a test. Like he felt guilty for some reason. She didn’t know why, though. As far as she knew he never did anything wrong.

Occasionally she had to work together with two robots. Their names were Atlas and P-body, and they were surprisingly human for well.. robots. They danced around, pretending to push each other off into the abyss. They were more gentle with Chell, though. The weird thing was that they also seemed a bit saddened by what was going on. 

When Wheatley asked her how she felt she always said something around ‘fine, why?’ and then he’d groan and mutter something about how she ‘wasn’t supposed to reply’ but Chell didn’t really understand. Maybe he didn’t care about her that much, anyway. That didn’t matter. If she was done with all the tests, she’d get to go home. That she didn’t remember home was something she tried to supress. 

[ day three of Wheatley’s reign ] 

“Go on, it isn’t that hard. ‘She’ was right when she said you weren’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Just finish it soon, will you?” 

Chell bit the inside of her cheek. If he said one more thing, she swore she’d run up to that screen he was watching her from and punch it, even though it didn’t do him any harm. At least it’d shut him up for a damn second. 

“Don’t listen to what he’s saying. Just finish the tests and after that I’ll lead you to him.” GLaDOS reminded her. Chell took a deep breath, and nodded. She could do this.   
This test was another one of those old tests, made for the more advanced levels. She’d have to jump across a big gap to get to the weighted cube, and then- back. She hadn’t figured out how to do that. There were little to no walls or floors you could actually shoot a portal on. Only two, one on the wall and one on the floor. Chell shot a portal on the floor and then on the wall, and jumped in. from the portal on the wall she went right through the floor portal and shot out the wall one again. 

As she flew through the air over the gap she discovered that, hey, there actually was a shootable ceiling and.. that she should’ve used that instead. She was losing speed fast, and she wasn’t near the other floor yet.

The potato didn’t even seem to notice anything, her one yellow eye fixed on a point somewhere over Chell’s shoulder. 

Shit, she really wasn’t going to make it. She instead fixed her eyes on below, looking for a place to land on. She did have her boots after all.

There was a ramp, far, far below her. As her speed heightened so did her fear. She looked at the potato fixed to her gun intently, hoping GLaDOS would suddenly change into her old self and dump her into a pond of muddy water just to piss her off.

But GLaDOS stayed deafeningly quiet.

The ramp was near now. Chell closed her eyes, hoping those boots really did make it impossible to land on your head. 

Meanwhile Wheatley wasn’t really paying any attention to his test subjects. He was recording it, after all. The Itch (Capital I) was the most annoying thing he’d ever felt before. Sure, there was that fellow Jerry over at management, but he would shut up after you gave him a cup of coffee. Not that he could drink it. He was a robot. Of course he couldn’t. But he liked to pretend. But the Itch didn’t particularly like coffee, it seemed. Wheatley didn’t really want to tell anyone that he did try it. But all the aroma had done was make him sneeze so he gave up on that idea, too. 

After a while he noticed that the test chamber was weirdly quiet. He went back to the security camera and looked at what was going on. 

He didn’t see anything moving in the test chamber. What? He thought, How could they have escaped? He checked the monitor for her location. After all, all Aperture Test subjects were chipped so their location could be monitored 24/7. 

‘Chell is located in test chamber eleven’ the high-pitched voice of the monitor gleefully brought him. Wheatley suddenly felt weird. 

He scanned the surface for Chell again, but to no avail. Suddenly, he noticed that somebody was trying to get his attention.

A soft voice. “She isn’t breathing.” 

GLaDOS was deep in thought when suddenly the whole portal gun shook, knocking her out of focus. When she looked at her surroundings, the first thing she noticed was that she was rather close to the ground. She scanned everything around her. They’d somehow ended up below the testing chamber, fallen onto a stray ramp hanging onto an equally stray test chamber which the one above was was resting upon. 

Next her was Chell, eyes closed, mouth half open like she often had it. GLaDOS had disconnected from the portal gun after the shock, and the gun was laying behind Chell’s back. She wasn’t.. getting up. She wasn’t doing anything, really. Her eyelids weren’t fluttering, and she wasn’t frowning either. GLaDOS zoomed her eye in to Chell’s face. She wasn’t moving at all.

‘Chell is located in test chamber eleven’ a faraway voice said. “She isn’t breathing..” she muttered to herself.

“..She isn’t- what? No, that doesn’t make any sense. All humans breathe.” Wheatley said. He plugged himself into another camera, a moveable one. He lowered it from the ceiling to get closer to Chell and her potato battery friend. 

“She used to breathe, as far as I know. I think I saw her breathe at least once.” Wheatley murmured, examining Chell’s lifeless body. “More than once, actually. She used to breathe a lot. Breathed a lot, after a particularly hard test. Breathes more than she talks, this one.” 

“She’s dead, you moron.” GLaDOS said. 

Wheatley looked at GLaDOS’ eye. “Pardon me?” 

“Chell is dead. She slipped. And those Aperture trademarked super boots didn’t safe her. I suddenly have the urge to resign.” GLaDOS said, a tad too bitterly for her own taste. 

“But, when will she get up? We still need to do stuff. She still needs to carry you over to me, and then you need to defeat me, and then-“ Wheatley was rambling again. 

“You generally can’t defeat anyone when you’re dead. At least, not as far as I know. There was a case a couple of years ago, though.. weird guy. Held an unusual affection for neurotoxin. Heh, we had so much in common.” GLaDOS said. 

Wheatley didn’t say anything for a moment, which surprised GLaDOS. She had thought he would panic, maybe have a full-on panic attack. But no, he was just hanging from a thread looking at Chell. 

GLaDOS studied those closed eyelids, that half-open mouth. She’d developed quite an affection for her human. She was rather intriguing. She didn’t seem to mind a word GLaDOS said. When she’d, admittedly rather harshly, told her she was adopted, she didn’t even as much as groan of annoyance. She just bit her lip and continued testing. Not many other humans reacted like that. But, of course, GLaDOS wasn’t half as harsh at the other humans, and the other humans were dead. So it wasn’t like she could do anything about that now. 

Weird to realize that she was gone for real now. Nobody to test with anymore. She’d have to train some robots, then. Maybe she could even build Wheatley into some low-quality android and make him test. 

Nobody to entertain her anymore, sure. Chell had been her prime source of entertainment for the last time, and the first time she met her, too. She had been unique in her undying-ness. Well. That’s.. awkward. 

“I just wanted to progress the story.” Wheatley spoke. GLaDOS imagined she quirked her eyebrows, phantom limbs somehow travelled with her to her new form. “You know. I defeated you, and you would defeat me. Over and over again.” 

That humored GLaDOS. “So you assumed that you would be included in the story.” She softly said. 

“Well, yes. After all we went through.” Wheatley said. 

“You weren’t around the first time. Why would you thing she wants you around?” GLaDOS asked. If she had that human body right now, she’d rub her forehead, providing herself with some comfort, even though it would result in nothing. She missed being able to do things without reason. 

“I thought I was her friend.” That hurt GLaDOS like a burned core. 

“You’ve hurt her more than I could ever dream of.” GLaDOS started. “You gave her the illusion of freedom, and then you took it away. And you think you can call yourself her friend?”

Wheatley was taken aback by this.

[ day four of Wheatley’s reign ]

“Sam. Cave. Liz. …that guy from marketing.. Paul? Caroline. Chell. The guys who used to bring the equipment to make more companion cubes. Steve.” GLaDOS mused. She remembered little names from the time when she was human, but it was nice to repeat them sometimes. Hearing them out loud, actually said by someone (even if it was herself) made it a lot realer somehow. 

She repeated herself a couple of times. Chell, she’d known another girl by that name once. At the bring your daughter to work day. She, then Caroline, was the one to organize it. She’d just about begged the other people, the guys who helped her take over Aperture after Cave’s passing to just let her do this last thing. She’d always loved children. When finally, she’d baked cake and put a lot of stuff on a big table for the girls to experiment with, the proud scientists and their daughters were let in.

There were some young kids, too. But it was mostly teenage girls. Caroline cleared her throat to get the girls’ attention.

“Hello.” She said, and waved. Several girls waved back. “Um.. welcome to the Aperture take your daughter to work day. We’ve got some fun things for you to do here.” She pointed at the table.

“As long as I can skip school for this.” One of the older girls said, and some others laughed. Caroline felt the sting of that in her chest, but chuckled sadly. “Yes, of course. But what we’re going to do today is.. a science project! We’ve got all the stuff here on this table. You can make a potato battery or- I don’t know. If you don’t know how to make something, you can look it up in one of the books provided. And at the end of the day you all get a piece of cake. Okay? If there’s any questions just ask me.” 

The girls started looking around the table, and all of them had quickly chosen something to make and started to get their equipment for it. Except for one girl, though.   
She was still sitting at one of the tables, staring blankly at it. Caroline frowned and walked up to her. 

“Hey! Have you chosen what to make yet?” she asked as cheerfully as possible, even though she knew something bad was going to happen. The girl looked up at her, and shrugged as she looked down again. 

“Do you want me to help you? You can write.. and I’ll make the battery.. or in reverse. If you want to make the battery. That’s okay too.” Caroline said. The girl didn’t move at first, but then nodded. 

Caroline grabbed another chair and sat next to the girl. “So… you’re gonna write the part, right? There’s a book over there- and you could.. write how a potato can power a small lamp or something. But in your own words. Okay? Just.. the paper’s over there.” She explained as she went to get the supplies for the potato battery. To her surprise, the girl actually went to do it. 

They sat in silence, working on the girl’s project. The poster was coming along greatly. The girl had a bit of a messy handwriting, but it was endearing. Caroline knew how to make a potato battery out of the back of her head, and connected the wires where she should, etcetera. 

Finally the girl tugged at her sleeve, and then pointed at a part of the poster. It read ‘by ____ and Chell’ Caroline felt like she was going to cry. Working together with a child like this made her think about kids again. She’d wanted to have kids, but it was always too busy at work for that.. and now it was too late. 

“Oh, honey.. you don’t have to write my name down. I hardly did anything!” she said, quickly rubbing her face. The girl looked at her, and shook her head. She pointed at the poster again, at the blank spot in front of ‘Chell’. 

“Alright.. if you insist.” Caroline managed a chuckle. “it’s.. Caroline. With a C. just like your name.” The girl gave a brief smile and wrote ‘Caroline’ in the blank space. Suddenly, somebody tapped Caroline on her back. She looked in the direction it came from, and met the eyes of the head engineer. “We’re going to have to request you to come with us.” He said in a grave voice.

“Um- alright. Five more minutes. I was just helping.. Chell with her project.” Caroline looked at the chief engineer with tears in her eyes, and he nodded. “Okay. Go on then. We’re waiting outside.” He said and walked off. 

Chell, the girl, tapped her on the shoulder again. She gave Caroline a scrap of paper. ‘are you alright?’ in the same messy handwriting. Caroline smiled despite herself again. “Of course, honey.” She said, avoiding Chell’s eyes and instead focusing on the potato battery, which was done already. 

Another scrap of paper was handed to her. ‘liar’. 

“I’m sorry, Chell, I really am.. but I have to go now. Um.. do well in school.. and stuff. And for the love of god, don’t work with anything science-y.” Caroline rambled. She breathed in once more, deeply, and stood up. as she looked around the room she saw proud girls showing their moms and dads their projects, and it was almost too much.  
And then, well, she barely remembered any of it. 

A claw came out of the ceiling, shocking GLaDOS out of her thoughts. It lifted her up effortlessly. Another one came, and lifted Chell up. Well, Chell’s body. 

She noticed that this was much more efficient than the elevators. Huh. That was unexpected. But frankly, so was being turned into a potato. And that happened. 

When she and Chell were lowered onto the floor of Wheatley’s main chamber, she noticed he had shut off his optic. To avoid the guilt, GLaDOS thought bitterly. 

“What are you gonna do? Leave her here to rot? You do know that humans.. produce odor after a while of.. deadness.” She said, attempting to sound snarky, but it came out more worried than anything else. No response from Wheatley, of course. She wasn’t really sure what she expected. Then, after she thought he would really just lay them to rot here, the claws returned to carry them into the core transfer location. What? 

The claws, rather professionally to GLaDOS’ surprise, made a small incision in Chell’s forehead. She briefly wondered what it was for, when it clicked. Wheatley wasn’t a moron after all.

He was crazy. 

“Um, Wheatley. I doubt that will work. Moron. Hey. You can’t transfer a core into a human body. Well, officially, it’s possible. But- a human brain can’t support a core intelligence. If you put me in there- I’ll only have four days of memory. Before I forget everything again. And then I start over. Do you get it?” GLaDOS started. The claw was heading for her now.

“Moron! I’m serious! Don’t do this! This is worse than killing me! Why don’t you just get over her and- “ 

 

[ Day five of Wheatley’s reign ] 

He’d locked her in a test chamber and didn’t even look at her. She refused to test. Instead, she found a piece of coal from the mines below, and started writing on the walls.  
Maybe she’d find it herself, later. Maybe Atlas and P-body would find it, and they’d decide to be smart for once in their lives and go after Wheatley and they’d put her back in her place. If she had it right, her memories would return slowly if she’d be placed back. And otherwise, she’d just make new ones. She already knew the first she would make. Killing Wheatley would certainly give an euphoric boost. 

She wrote instructions on the wall, how to do a core transfer, how to get to the button. What to do to preserve the human body. A note on not killing Wheatley yet. She’d want to do that herself, rather.

Then she started drawing. 

It was easy to learn how to walk again. It’s like riding a bike, you just forget how to do it when you get turned into a huge robot. Writing and drawing came as a second nature. She started drawing portraits of Chell from memory, not even daring to look into a mirror of any sort. She was sure she was wearing this face all wrong. 

After she’d covered a good half of the walls with portraits of Chell, she decided to draw some other things. She drew Cave Johnson, although she couldn’t really remember how the lower half of his face looked. Mind you, he had dreamy eyes. The next piece of moonstone was filled with drawings of eyes, with clouds drawn inside of them. 

At the last of the moonstone walls, she decided to write one more message. To her future self. 

‘if you’re reading this, your name isn’t Chell.’ 

And that was all. That was enough. And she threw the piece of coal on the ground, and grabbed the weighted cube and put it on the button. The door opened. She knew that once she’d finished all the tests in the track he’d just make her run them again. So she would pass this chamber again. 

It was weird to know that nothing of you would be left in three days. But hate fueled her more than anything else did. She was going to find Wheatley, and she was going to bloody kill him.

For what he’d done to her. But mostly for what he had done to Chell. 

That was her final thought when she went through the door.

[ Day six of Wheatley’s reign ] 

In one of the chambers, instead of running the test, she grabbed the weighted cube and sat on it, positioning herself in front of the camera. Wheatley was watching, bless his wretched soul. Needed that euphoria like a drug. Well, actually, Aperture scientists had found out that at least fifty percent of the world’s euphoria was found in the mount Everest. No- wait. That didn’t make any sense. GLaDOS sighed. She must already be losing memories.

“I’m already starting to forget.” She started. The camera focused on her face. She felt a connection with Wheatley in this way. 

“I remember you. You’re the moron. You don’t fit in with the cool kids. And I remember her, oh god do I remember her. I remember Cave. I don’t remember what he looked like, but I remember he was allergic to honey. It’s weirdly specific.” GLaDOS said, laughing softly. She straightened her legs. “You’re allowed to laugh. I’m going to die in two days. But I’ll still find a way to kill you. But for now, let’s toast on it.” 

“I was in love with her.” She murmured after a while, not much harder than a whisper. The camera looked at her intently. “I was in love with her, and you killed her. What a drastic turn of events. I thought I was going to be the one to do that.”

GLaDOS imagined a sigh emitting from the soundless camera. The red light indicated that Wheatley was indeed watching, he just wasn’t answering. She imagined he was angry at himself, maybe kicking things away around his chamber, breaking everything around him. He would be screaming, trying to get leverage on something. But to no avail, of course.

“it’s funny, really. You spend your time hating someone so much that you don’t realize affection creeping in before you boot up one day and feel like you have butterflies in your stomach, anxious to see your test subject again. You can shake it off, pretending that it’s just your body longing for the testing euphoria you know you will get, but in the end you have to be honest with yourself. You’re a robot, and you’re in love with a human. All taboo aside, it’s still pretty shameful.” 

GLaDOS arched her back again, stretching the sore muscles in her arms. It wasn’t really because of the testing, more because of the drawing. She had covered all the walls in drawings and writings, and that took a while and a lot of standing of tiptoes. Wheatley hadn’t said anything yet. 

[ day six of Wheatley’s reign ]

“You’re doing great, love. Good job. Just a few more chambers and you’re done for the day.” 

Wheatley had started talking to her again. She did not remember her own name, but she did know she was angry at the man above, that he tried to kill her. And she felt a horrible heartache. There had been a girl, a girl she loved. But for the love of everything holy above, she had no idea who it was anymore. 

‘I must be quickly deteriorating’ she thought in herself. She thought she was going to die, no, wait, she knew she was. The man above groaned, but not in pain. More so like a weight was lifted from his shoulders. 

“Good job! Through yet another test chamber.” Wheatley said. He sounded genuinely glad. She didn’t answer. 

[ day thirty-six of Wheatley’s reign ]

Today Chell passed a beautiful room. All the walls were painted on. Portraits of herself, portraits of an older man, some eyes just loosely drawn. Whoever made these must be a real artist.

Then, there was writing on the walls, too. It had all these words that she didn’t know. It felt like she wasn’t supposed to see this, like it was a secret she had with these walls. But mostly, she had the feeling that Wheatley wasn’t allowed to see this either. 

‘You’re not his friend.   
He’s only using you.   
You need to kill him. It’s the only way.’ 

‘if you’re reading this, your name isn’t Chell.’ 

That one scared her the most. The stranger who wrote this.. she didn’t even know them. But she did know that she had to remember this. Like it would help her with something one day. She wasn‘t sure with what, or how. 

She left the secret little room and continued doing the tests Wheatley had for her. She had to think about this. 

[ …. ]

Doug Rattmann took one more deep breath of clean air and went into the room again. Everywhere, he saw people on the verge of passing out. Girls clutching their parents’ lab coats, pressing their faces into their shirts. 

There was the girl he was looking for. She looked asleep (oh god no, what if he was too late?). he scooped her up in his arms easily and carried her out to one of the cleaner rooms free of the neurotoxin. There was a computer here, and he laid Her down on the floor momentarily so he could access it better. 

Here. The list of test subjects. Doing a search rewarded him, telling him she had tested before. Of course, her parents probably thought it was good to get her tested. Rattman had seen her back then. Her mental profile was really interesting. She was stubborn and actually finished the tests. That was new. She had been diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses, including autism. This would make her an important test subject. He shook of the feeling that he was only doing this for science. No, that wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t just because of her mental profile. It was rather because if anybody should be the one to know how to bring this place down, it would be her. 

Rattmann moved ‘Chell’ from place #1498 to #1. That would mean Caroline- um, GLaDOS would begin testing immediately. She would probably take care of her number one test subject, as to get that built-in testing euphoria. Rattmann smiled at his own plan. At least he could save one of them. 

[ …. ] 

Chell awoke from the bright lights suddenly engulfing the chamber.  
“Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture science computer-aided enrichment center. ”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a review. Should I write more Portal stuff or should I just stick to Supernatural? please tell me. all critique is accepted, as long as you are a bit nice about it.


End file.
